Tag: life

There are about six weeks left in this year, which is just nuts. Thanksgiving is next week, and yesterday we got our first real snow. A layer of white knitted the tree branches into delicate lace, while thick layers of white velvet draped on prickling pines. People complained. It was a great day.

This first snow filled me with a feeling of ridiculous hope. There was just something about the fact that something so beautiful can come from wind and cold, and that if that can happen, anything can.

These past few months, I’ve had a good season of writing. But I’ve decided I want to finish out the year being more thoughtful, more contemplative, than productive. I want the space to really notice the beauty and joy of these last few weeks, and to enjoy them without stress, without hurry.

There are some projects I’d like the space to to work on without an immediate need to share. And I want to get back in the habit of producing good work which I share because I love it, not producing just to share.

All this to say, I’m taking a blogging break for the rest of the year. It’s a little retreat, a self-conference. Have a lovely rest of 2018, as we look forward to the new year with joy.

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My least favorite part of any social exchange, (especially a professional one where I’m trying to make a good impression) is when someone asks me, “Do you have any questions?”

It’s a perfectly considerate thing to ask. But I feel put on the spot. If I do have questions, I feel like they may be stupid ones. If I don’t, it may seem like I haven’t thought things through enough. Should I have questions? I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

So my typical answer is half casual, half flattering: “No, I think you’ve explained everything pretty well.” Or I take a rain check: “You know, I probably will down the road, but at this point no.”

Maybe someday I’ll pull a Kelly from The Office, and answer, “Yeah, I have a lot of questions. Number one: how dare you?” but unfortunately (or fortunately) no situation has called for that, and I doubt I’d be brave enough to say it anyway.

That’s what it all really boils down to: bravery. Or the lack thereof. I don’t ask questions because my goal in any given social exchange, particularly one where I feel the lesser of two powers, is to keep my head down and gather as much information as possible while causing as little a scene as possible.

I also don’t have confidence in my brain’s ability to come up with dazzling, insightful questions on the spot. It’s only later, at home, while I’m brushing my teeth, that I realize I’m wondering something and that that person earlier could have answered my questions. But at this point, of course, it’s too much of a bother to go back and ask, so I’ll figure it out on my own.

Figure it out on my own. The phrase is code, I’ve realized, for I’m too afraid to ask for help.

Or maybe, I’m afraid of the answer.

The second one isn’t usually my reason for not asking questions in, say, a job interview or a writing class. But it has, in the past, been my reason for not asking the deep questions of life and faith.

In my experience, this fear of asking questions is especially marked when you grow up as a Christian kid. In the church, you’re often subtly discouraged to ask tough questions, because even the existence of a question shows some level of doubt, and doubt is terrifying.

We become obsessed with finding the single right, godly, biblical answer that will be 100% correct 100% of the time. That’s why good church people squirm around the tough questions on things like war and miscarriage and poverty and addiction and divorce and sex. These subjects are not tidy; there’s no single, right, godly, biblical answer, and it’s easier to just make a blanket statement and move on.

It’s understandable. Questions make us all uncomfortable no matter who we are, because an answered question changes the status quo, and an unanswered question shows weakness in the status quo. Questions drive us deeper, make us evaluate the situation and ourselves, and sometimes we don’t like what we see. It’s easier to keep plodding along the way we’ve always been, to resist change, to be an object in motion staying in motion, instead of defying inertia for a moment and asking, “why?”

A few years ago, during one of the hardest times in my life, I was questioning everything. It was terrifying. I was like a two-year-old, experiencing everything for the first time, asking why why why?

Why do we do things this way? Why don’t we question that? Why did I only ever learn that Christianity could be aligned with a single political ideology? Why didn’t I learn that art and culture can be beautiful things that point us to God? Why have I always learned to look at marriage a single way? Why are we so quick to make the Bible into a calculating list of appearance-keeping? Why do we treat some sinners worse than others?

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t accepting my world the way it had been presented to me. I was asking all the questions about all the things.

And you know what? God still found me. God wasn’t wringing his hands, lamenting about how Hannah had walked away from the faith with all her questions. No, God followed me through each dark thicket and shadowed forest, until I realized that God wasn’t following me at all: I was following him.

For the first time in my life, my faith was my own. I had wrestled with it, using the brain and words and thoughts and emotions God gave me. And that’s when I realized that God is stronger than our questions. Curiosity and faith do not exist on the opposite ends of a spectrum. God is never threatened by my desire to know more; he’s honored and loved by it. Because to love is to know. The desire to know is the desire to more deeply love.

Do I trust the Holy Spirit to guide me into all truth, which he promised to do? Do I trust that my questions are God tugging at the corners of my mind to pull me into a deeper knowledge of him? Do I trust that if I’m seeking the truth, I will find it?

And the answer is this: I must trust that these things are true, because God already promised these things to me. He has promised that his spirit will lead me into truth (John 16:13). He has promised that when I seek, I will find what I’m truly looking for (Matthew 7:7-8).

It wasn’t easy to question everything. It still isn’t, because I still am questioning. I’ve found that even believing some things for sure doesn’t mean other things won’t be in flux. I think that’s why the most powerful prayer we find in the Bible is “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief” (Mark 9:23).

God’s response to us wanting and needing to question our faith isn’t “Go to hell! (Literally and figuratively!)” God doesn’t turn his back on us and say, “Go have your hippie fun and come back to me when you’re good and ready.”

God pursues us, relentlessly, and delights in us, always. Especially when, like little children or angry teenagers or curious adults we ask questions about our Father. Filled with love and compassion, he looks for us, runs to us, and embraces us (Luke 15:20). All he wants, all he has ever wanted, is our companionship. All he wants is generous, lavish community and oneness and love.

Because plot twist: God was never concerned with our tidy answers anyway.

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I’ve always considered myself someone who likes to travel. I mean, it makes you sound so accomplished.

“What do you like to do?”
“I’m a writer, and a big reader. I also love to travel.”
“Really! Where have you been?”
“I’ve been to Europe,” *shrug*.
“Oooh.”

I live for the Admiring Oooh.

In all seriousness, I really do enjoy travel, not just for the Admiring Oooh. Visiting new places and seeing life done in different ways has always fascinated me. It’s wonderful to think that while you’re at home doing whatever you do, all these people are here, miles and miles away, doing what they do. It doesn’t stop and start when you arrive, it happens simultaneously with your own timeline. And for a moment, you get to step into a story not your own, and watch it, and sometimes even write some of it.

However, as I’ve gotten older (and this is really sad because I’m not even that old), I’ve found that I have to remind myself how much I love traveling, because more often than not it really stresses me out. New places are unfamiliar, full of a million unknowns, and I hate unknowns. Also I have a sensitive stomach that gets ill easily. Also I need to have enough sleep, and who knows if this will happen? Also I sunburn, literally, like hell. Also I am easily dehydrated. Where’s the closest water fountain? I pull away from my house, my place, with all my things in it, and see it looking so forlorn and abandoned, and I want to run back and cancel everything.

(And this is just going to visit my parents.)

I’ve learned that some things are worth hacking through a slew of fears for. I’ve done it before, and I regret it when I don’t. I want to cling to home, to peace, to the familiar, but not always for noble reasons. Often, very often, I cling to these things out of fear, thinking that without them I will no longer be myself. I forget that I am becoming evermore myself because of the times I travel, the times I encounter unknowns, the times I uproot myself now for better roots later. I would rather be that sort of person than to spare my house’s feelings.

I really do want to be the sort of person who travels, and not just for the Admiring Oooh.

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We had breakfast at a random-but-delicious Greek diner in Nashville, then we went to the Parthenon. I’ve been there before, back when I lived in Tennessee for a few months. So for me, it felt less like touristing than it did being a local and showing a newbie the local sights. This, of course, in inaccurate, but it was nice to pretend.

The Russian isn’t really one for the arts, but he did marry a woman with an English degree, so he’s good at dipping his toes in. We milled around the art gallery under the Parthenon, looked at the collection of paintings based on Tennessee state symbols, and pondered how much of a hole buying two $7500 paintings would put us in. His favorite was a closeup of a ladybug on a leaf. Mine was a detail of juniper berries. Neither of us would compromise, so $15000 in debt it is.

It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day, the kind we probably won’t get in Pennsylvania until our annual February thaw. The place was full of people from everywhere, a mix of languages and dialects.

Hearing the Southern accent still makes me do a double take; I’m so unused to it, and I was even when I lived here. It reminds me that even though I consider Nashville an adopted city, even though I can get around without directions and show my husband the local sights, I still prefer a rugged Pittsburgh accent to a Southern one, a mess of damp hills to a dry plain of flatness, pierogis and sauerkraut to barbecue.

Despite everything, I’m still a tourist.

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Have you ever recognized the insane number of little thoughts that flit through your head each day? The opinions you form, the emotions you feel, the jokes you tell yourself? Sometimes my mind is like a pinball machine, bouncing from subject to subject (or, more accurately, like a person walking through the living room in the dark, bumping from piece of furniture to piece of furniture. Not that this has ever happened).

My mind makes these frantic trips around the space that is my brain and creates its own culture, its own environment, inside my head. It sounds weird to say it this way, but I think it’s true for us all. We all have roads our minds travel over and over, sometimes deepening them into ruts. We all have trains our minds ride for a while before getting off to ride the next one. Sometimes we ride one train too long or too often and we have to exit quickly and never buy another ticket…

The truth is, there are thoughts we think that no one else will ever know about, not only because it would be annoying as hell for us to tell everything we think, but also because we ourselves aren’t always aware of what the mind entertains itself with. These thoughts are lost, sloughing off with each day, never preserved, never contained. Of course, they must be in the brain somewhere, and sometimes a remembered thought hits us suddenly years down the road.

But so much of our internal lives are never remembered by the world, and that’s terrifying to me.

My best friend teases me for liking “old things,” antiques and dried flowers and doilies. One time I asked her opinion of my vintage-style home decorating, and then… I never asked her opinion again. Moronically and hilariously, it’s one of our major disagreements (along with the role of fruit in dessert).

But I will forever like “old things” because they have what we often call “character.” You go in an old house and see the scratched wood floor and say “wow, this house has character.” It’s a way of recognizing that this place, this thing, has seen life. It’s been around for years of thoughts and conversations and emotions.

I think that’s why I love my old things so much: they are a way to grab hold of those million fleeting thoughts that bump around in our brains day after day. Someday we will be gone, and our thoughts with us, and all that’s left will be the coffee tables we stubbed our toes on and the picture frames we dusted and the dishes we ate off of. For a brief moment, each dusty thing in an antique store was once audience to the thoughts and feelings that no one else will ever know or remember. And now they are all that’s left.

Does this sound nihilistic? I don’t mean to be nihilistic. I’m just trying to defend my love of old things.

I also think this is what gives me even more conviction to be a good writer. The great moments in history, the wars and celebration and speeches, will always be remembered. But it’s the little things, the jokes around the dinner table, the shade of blue the sky was on a certain day, or the smell of your grandmother’s perfume when you hugged her, that won’t be.

That’s a shame, because all those little details are what life is. And that is even more noble and real than the great moments could ever hope to be. But out of sight, out of mind. We don’t realize how good our days are until they’ve passed and become the good old days.

This is why I’ll always love my old things and try to remember each stupid detail of each humdrum phase of life. This is why I have a shelf full of journals and random scraps of thoughts written on paper and phrases typed into my phone on the go so I don’t forget them. Because these little stories are life, and these little stories are what we end up caring about.

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I often feel like I’m playing against myself at life, trying to beat myself and emerge the winner.

I’ve always had these grand aspirations of being a good writer. I’ve always taken it for granted that I’ll be able to do it. When I used to tell people I was going to college for writing, I could never understand their quizzical looks.

“What kind of job can you get with that?” they’d ask.

“Um, lots of stuff,” I’d say.

“Are you going to teach?”

“Heck no. I’m going to publish books.”

“So you’re going to write the Great American Novel.”

Um, duh? I’d think, rather uncharitably.

(My hubris knows no bounds.)

So now I’ve graduated, and I’ve started grad school, and I’m entering the part of my life where those grand aspirations won’t come true unless I start doing something. I haven’t necessarily been a slouch these past few years, but neither have I written the Great American Novel (it’s currently under construction).

And while I’m breaking into the freelancing world little by little (for which I’m immensely grateful), I’m learning that my own worst enemy isn’t time or writer’s block or other people.

It’s myself.

But not in the way you think. While poor time management is a very common method of self-sabotage, time management is not how I’m my worst enemy.

I’m my own worst enemy when I assume I will fail.

I’ve been agitated since graduating, upset with myself for not going farther in the three months since I received my degree. I should be putting myself out there! Writing dawn til dusk! Publishing left and right! Getting a real job! But when life takes me a different, more quiet and unassuming direction, I get frustrated, because something in me fears that if I don’t paddle frantically, I’ll drown.

Trouble is, I’ve never been very good at paddling frantically. I’m just not the Type A, go-getter type. I’m naturally more deliberate and more thoughtful. I think this makes me a better writer in many ways (I notice the little things) and a worse one in others (okay, yes, time management).

But something I’ve learned is that writing is an organic thing. It lives and it grows in the way I least expect it. Sometimes I have to wait for life to happen before my writing gets better, because life marinates my writing and then writing marinates my life and they both need time to mature correctly. And I have to trust that God made me me, and He also made me a writer, and I have to work with who He made me and the life He gave me in order for anything I do to be worth a thing.

Also, I’ve learned that Comparison is a bitch. (Sorry, Comparison.) Comparison muscles preconceived notions of grandeur into places they don’t belong. Comparison is what makes me sure I’ll fail before I even try.

Comparison makes me lament the unique person, the unique writer, God made me to be. It makes me chase after some other person’s life until I feel God pulling me back to the more deliberate and thoughtful path He wants me on. I often sense Him bemusedly berating me. No, you idiot. Back here. Get back here!

(God and I have a very sassy relationship.)

I have to remember that the life I have is a good one. The life I have is the one that belongs to me. And if I live it well, if I live it gratefully, I won’t fail. Maybe it won’t look like my grand aspirations. Maybe I won’t write the Great American Novel. Maybe I’ll write the Great American Flop instead (but hey, I’d still be famous).

Goals are important. Hard work is important. But writing is also organic, just as life is organic. Sometimes relaxing my expectations is as important as making expectations in the first place.

I find peace in 1 Corinthians 7:17, which says, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” If this is my goal, I don’t have to fear mediocrity or failure. If this is my goal, failure is impossible.

(And seriously, Hannah. It’s only been three months. Give yourself a break.)

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I’ve been reading a book about quelling anxiety. Not for myself, of course, because I don’t need it at all. Ha.

One thing I’ve learned is that the fear of anxiety is what makes anxiety something to fear. Anxiety in itself is nothing, just extra adrenaline. Becoming hyper-aware of it and then fearing its arrival is what makes anxiety so crippling.

The thing to do about this, the book says, is to dare anxiety to do its worst. When you start to notice the symptoms of an anxiety attack, you’re supposed to call them out. “Heart palpitations? Is that all you can do? I’ve gotten through that before. Try harder.”

This approach is based on the premise that running away from fear makes fear more frightful. It makes its steps sound louder, its voice more resonant, its whispers more chilling. You try not to look until you can’t bear to look.

But when you do end up forcing yourself to turn around and stare fear in the face, you find that it’s really small. It’s pitiful. It’s laughable. When you run toward it, daring it to do its worst, you find as you get closer how utterly small and insignificant it is. You find its claws dull and its voice nothing more than a squeak.

One day a friend and I were talking about fear. We noticed how fear is often like a door that swings shut, and if you leave it alone, if you choose not to indulge it, it’ll stay shut. It’s not strong enough to open the door itself. But idiot humans that we are, we indulge a peek. We crack the door open, and then we stick our foot in, and then we keep it there, even though what we let out makes us miserable.

But running is tiring. And a heavy door on a small foot hurts. So why do we torment ourselves when the thing we’re running from and the thing we’re leaving the door open for is just a knee-high squeaky nebby jag* who’s only alive because we indulge it? To be honest, it doesn’t make sense. And it’s just plain impractical.

Running away from fear is one of my main hobbies. And every time I manage to outrun it, I double back, crack open the door, and stick my foot in to let the fear catch up to me. I’m both runner and doorman. It’s exhausting. It’s moronic. But it’s my nature.

Recently, during a super stressful week, I tried out the book’s strategy. I dared my fear to do its worst in the little knots of life that often turn into my biggest sources of anxiety.

The fridge is getting empty and I’m not sure when I’ll have extra money to go to the grocery store? Excellent. Let’s see how long I can round up what’s left in the kitchen and play Iron Chef.

The new month means a new round of bills more expensive than last month? Sweet. I can’t wait to see how much higher the heating bill is this month. I am actually very interested; the weather’s been cold and I live in an old drafty house. Let’s see how drafty, shall we?

I’m tired and emotional and need to take care of some similarly tired, emotional people? Awesome. I’ll see how long it’ll take before I quietly burst into tears. Maybe I’ll break my record and make it three days instead of two.

Of course, my snappy comebacks helped. I’m always one to laugh at my own jokes. But I realized that calling fear’s bluff helps immensely. Because fear can’t ever keep its own promises.

The book cautions me that I have to keep up with this approach until it’s second nature. It’s a process that won’t be overcome overnight. And sometimes I forget altogether. Sometimes going through the process of calling fear’s bluff is too exhausting. I’d much rather run away and get my foot stuck in the door instead.

But that’s okay, because I have another trick up my sleeve that neither fear nor the book are counting on: I happen to be a child of God. And when I’m tired of running or holding a door open or turning around and going through a set of bluff-calling questions, I can look up and pray one of my favorite prayers:

“I can’t wait to see how You’ll turn this into something I can worship You for.”

It’s a work in progress. But it gets me to stop running. And it helps me shut the door tight.

*Nebby Jag (n). A term of derision. A contracted form of the phrase “nebby jagoff”, taken from the Pittsburghese “nebby” meaning nosy and bothersome, and “jagoff” meaning an unintelligent person, a jerk.

My mom was the first one. She dreams in sagas. And they’re just true enough to be disturbing. When I was a teenager she dreamt someone had cut off one of our chickens’ heads and was running around the house with it in some pagan ritual dance. This was just around the time Grandpa had come over to butcher some roosters (a disturbing event in its own right) and so bloody, still-moving chickens were on all our minds. Add that to the Biblical idea that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood” and Mom was concerned. I was concerned. I’m sure her dream had some kind of sequel, because all her dreams do, but I don’t want to know what it was.

And then there’s my husband. My dear husband, who fights wars and monsters and once jumped out the window in his sleep. At least once a week I’ll greet him with a “good morning! Wanna know what you said to me in your sleep last night?” I used to worry he’d think I was an enemy and try to lop me off, but he recognizes me in his sleep. So while he’s screaming and cursing and thrashing and waving through the air trying to fight attackers, he’s doing it to protect me. And I think that’s sweet.

I have recurring dreams. They play like video games, in which I know what will happen because it did last time, and it’s just a matter of being prepared this time. Then the volcano erupts or the demon attacks before its supposed to, and I grow irate. “You weren’t supposed to do that for another five minutes!”

One recurring theme in my dreams is choosing between two people I love. For years now I’ve regularly dreamed that I have to choose between Alex and another suitor. And all throughout the dream I’m conflicted: they’re both so endearing. I made a commitment to Alex, yeah, but this other guy is so dreamy (pun) and so nice and has many of the qualities Alex has too. Then I wake up and realize: BOTH THE MEN WERE ALEX.

This week I had the same dream, but about someone else. I dreamt that I had to pick between my best friend and a new friend, and it was a rush against the clock because I knew if I didn’t choose which friend to keep, my best friend would choose, and I just knew she wouldn’t choose me. I’d be friendless. It was the silly, childish thing where you can only have one friend, and it was reject or be rejected. Then I woke up and realized: BOTH THE CHICKS WERE MY BEST FRIEND.

This interesting variation on the love triangle dream set me thinking. (I’m becoming my own dream psychiatrist.) In both the love triangle and the friend triangle I’m afraid. I’m trying to hedge my bets, trying to make sure I won’t be stuck with someone who won’t love me forever. I’ve felt this very same thing in real life, in both making friends and getting married. Putting people in your life and committing to them is a terrifying gamble. There are so many sides to a person, so many sides to yourself, and some days they’re more happy with you than others, and vice versa. And there is nothing keeping anyone in your life but sheer will. Nothing keeping anyone in your life but sheer love. I can’t think about it too often. It’s terrifying.

But apparently my brain thinks about it even when I don’t. It dreams about it. It stresses me out for hours a night, until I wake up and realize there never had to be a choice in the first place. Both the men were Alex and both the friends were my best friend. On both bad days and good days, it’s still the same Alex, and on bad days and good days, it’s still the same friend. And the choice is not which side of the person to love, but to love all sides equally. Just as I want to be loved for the many sides of myself.

I got Alex some dream dictionaries, mostly for laughs. “Now we can figure your brain out,” I told him. But since he hasn’t jumped out of any windows recently, perhaps he doesn’t need the books. Perhaps I should start reading them for myself.

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It’s 2017! According to the people in my social media feeds, which is always a reliable source of information, the new year is a good thing because last year was apparently terrible.

My writing dropped off the face of the internet’s earth for a while, and that’s okay. Because the internet’s earth isn’t all of earth, and sometimes it’s good to keep secrets from it.

Last year around this time I made the “writelution” (geez, I already feel like I’ve matured in a year) to take joy. And I think I did it, or at least tried to. At the time, it was a life-giving goal, something which challenged me to scrounge for joy when I least felt it was there.

But this time I think I’m ready for something different. I’m tired of scrounging, of hunting. I want to choose, rather than just take, hope. It’s a different kind of action. It’s utilizing what’s already there instead of trying to find it.

One of my favorite thoughts I came across this year was this one:

And this quote sums up my desire to be more active in the pursuit of joy. This past year, my soul has hummed and danced and sung on good days, but it’s had trouble doing all those things on the bad ones. I find that I build nests in sorrow because deep down I want to. It’s warm and comforting being cold and uncomfortable.

I used to sing regularly. I used to sing every week at church, together with a big well-oiled machine of a worship band. People said I was good, and that I blessed them. And in a lot of ways, I was blessed too. There were fleeting moments when the songs filled my heart and veins and bones and exploded into the big bright sanctuary and up to God.

But after a few years, singing felt stale, not worshipful at all. It became a routine, a scheduled rehearsal and playacted performance. But I kept singing because I was expected to, and I kept singing because there was no good reason not to, and I kept singing because people were blessed by it.

But after a while, I didn’t want to sing anymore.

At least, not in front of people. I wanted to sing the songs of my soul. I wanted my heart and veins and bones to fill up and explode to God, just to God, not to anyone else. And then various church and family crap happened, and it felt like all the literal and figurative singing was such a sham, like I had been exploited into blessing people who wouldn’t bless me back.

I realize this isn’t necessarily accurate, but it’s how I felt. And I spent most of 2016 feeling that to walk into a church and sing in any capacity was a lie. The words of every song were stale and sneering. I assumed that every well-oiled worship band machines were scheduled rehearsals and performances like I had once been. And I got angry, because I really wanted to sing and fill up and explode together with my brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to sing by myself anymore.

“I want to be in church, God.” I prayed. “And I want to sing and I want it to be real, and I want to feel like I belong and have a community. But I just can’t.”

So for a while I stumbled along and went to church with my best friend and my husband and I tried to sing. Some days I sang on the outside, some days I only sang on the inside, and some days I didn’t sing at all. And every so often there would be a moment when the song would fill my heart and veins and bones and explode, and I’d nearly cry. The moment never lasted very long but I was thankful for it. And then the moments started getting closer and closer together, until I could sing, really sing, for a whole service.

Obviously it’s still not cut and dried. Obviously there are other ways I need to learn to sing, inwardly if not outwardly. But I’m learning, and I’m thankful for that, and I’m content with that. This past year I’ve been confused, I’ve felt lost and I’ve been brokenhearted. And God has met me in each of those moments, I think, to remind me to sing anyway. And I want to. I want to sing even if there isn’t a song playing. So that’s my intention or resolution or whatever it is.

Sing Anyway.

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Do you remember running to the playground as a kid and beholding a line of colorful wood or metal seesaws? You’d pair up with a friend and take turns pushing each other off the earth and weighing each other back down.

But no one, child or adult, is ever satisfied with the monotony of passively bounding up and down, up and down. A seesaw gets boring. So at some point you’d get off your side and onto the center of the seesaw, trying to stand balanced between each end, strong and solid, impartial to the tug of either side.

That was always a lot more exciting, because it was really hard. You’d wobble, doing some kind of wild calisthenics as you try to find equilibrium. Some of you triumphed, and others (I hope it’s not just me) are still working on it.

I feel like I’ve spent most of my life on a seesaw. Mentally. Ideologically. Spiritually. I’m all or nothing, liberal or conservative, left or right. I become fixated on one extreme, unwilling to budge out of fear. I’m afraid that if I do leave my comfortable, well-worn side of the seesaw, I’ll tumble toward the other end, the other extreme, hurtling back to earth with a resounding bang that rattles my bones.

What I don’t realize, of course, is that this hurtling has already happened, because I’ve stayed on one end of the seesaw the whole time. That’s the nature of a seesaw, you know; that’s the whole point. I’ve bounded up, but I always come back down. Neither end, neither extreme, is impervious to damage. You fly up in the euphoria of a false righteousness, only to fall when your own perfect expectations are impossible.

I thought I was secure. I thought I was solid and strong. But in reality I’ve been foolishly flailing in the air, so self-assured while I fly untethered and fall with rattled bones. In my pride, I did not see the damage. I was oblivious to the fine cracks that this kind of strain causes.

The more I learn about God, the more I realize that He does not call us to extremes. He calls us to “be fully convinced in our own minds”, promising that He “is able to make us stand” (Romans 14, verses 5 and 4). This means following the call of the Holy Spirit, Who shows each of us what the center of the seesaw is in our time and place.

In real life, I’m terrible at balancing on the top of a seesaw. I look more like a frantic surfer than anything. I fall to the ground, injure myself, look stupid. And of course, spiritually I’m not much better. But that’s okay. It’s a process. And I’d rather go through this process than spend my life stuck on one end, forever bounding up and down and thus damaging myself.

God promises that He is able to make me stand, and day by day, with His grace, I get better at standing with a foot on each side of the seesaw. This way of living is a little terrifying, especially if, like me, you have terrible balance.

In the very loosely-borrowed words of C.S. Lewis: it’s not a tame life, but it sure as hell is a good one.

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Hannah is an old lady at heart, with a deep love of yarn and floral patterns. She has curly hair, she is a lefty, she googles everything, and her favorite color is blue. She can usually be found reading everything from nineteenth-century fiction to modern psychology, doing yoga, dragging out chores to fit the podcast she's listening to, or watching The Office with her husband.